


Echo and Ricochet

by enemyfrigate



Series: Echo and Ricochet [1]
Category: Justified
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Inefficient travel plans, Kidnapping, Law Enforcement, M/M, Nicaragua, Pre-Series, Racism, Reader Tim, Rescue, Torture, Ugly American
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:59:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3170690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemyfrigate/pseuds/enemyfrigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deputy Marshal Rayan Givens trails Roland Pike to Nicaragua. Hitman Tim Gutterson trails Tommy Bucks to the same place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echo and Ricochet

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stand alone story. It is not related to my Waypoints series.
> 
> Trigger warnings:
> 
> \- Torture of a minor character  
> \- Single use of a racial slur (by the villain)
> 
> Please consider your triggers and comfort level with these subjects before reading.

Raylan fumes, watching the elevator numbers count down to the first floor. The hotel is hushed and quiet, not that busy, behind him.

He’d expected - well, what most Americans probably expect when they do business in another country: not exactly bowing and scraping, but, you know, people happy to help. People who think your issue is important.

Any help would be a surprise, at this point. The national police probably would not loan him a pencil.

Raylan blames his own arrogance. He knows he gets away with a lot because of natural charm, good looks, and let’s face it, a badge, and he’s uncomfortably realizing that a lot of that leeway is down more to the color of his skin, the dick between his legs, and his assumption that he is in the right.

The Nicaraguan Policia Nacional, here in Managua, were not impressed. Not with his nationality, not with his credentials, not with his person, and especially not with his assumptions. He doesn’t need a lot of Spanish to understand that.

Raylan gets on the empty elevator when the doors slide open in silent invitation, stabs at the button for the fifth floor.

The Nicaraguan government is notoriously uninterested in cooperating with the U. S. government, and there’s no extradition treaty, but he thought the personal touch would work with fellow police officers. Get him a fingernail under the edge of this Roland Pike thing, start prying shit up.

He had not only been mistaken, he’d been very mistaken.

A lifetime of swallowing anger had let him tip his hat, (metaphorically, since he’d left the hat at home), say gracias at his most sincere, and take himself away to the hotel, as suggested, to await their summons. If the national police deign to even look into Pike, after his very presence had pissed them off.

Gio’s money and power might be a factor, too. Though Gio doesn’t have much in the way of Nicaraguan connections, it seems like every con in Miami knows that this country does not extradite to the U.S.

Raylan had once tried to convince Dan Grant, his boss, to stake out the departures gates at Miami International, right by the non-stops to Nicaragua, and just pick up wanted fugitives without even trying.

Raylan hadn’t been serious, and Dan had just rolled his eyes, but. Here Raylan is, looking for a bad guy in Nicaragua. Although, as Dan would no doubt point out, Pike had ditched him in Texas and headed for Mexico.

Anyway.

Raylan knows he’s on his own in a foreign country. He should maybe be more bothered by that than he is.

The doors open and he comes off the elevator without really looking, ready to dump his bag, get a shower, and come up with a new plan. But he's not paying much attention and he bangs into someone, starts to get tangled up.

His gun is still in its case, so he isn’t tempted to pull it, but it’s a near thing.

The other guy grabs his shoulder and pushes him away with firm hands, putting space between them both. He’s a little below average height, lightish hair, more wiry than anything else, and he’s got a gun on his hip.

Raylan holds his hands up. “Lo siento.” _I’m sorry_ .

  
“No worries, man.” The guy pushes past him and stabs the elevator button. American accent.

Raylan clocks the guy’s ass - nice - sighs, and goes to find his room.

 

 

The bar could be any hotel bar anywhere. A little dark, a little worn, a transition place. But the bar stools are fairly comfortable, and the bartender has a heavy hand on the pour, and a professionally sympathetic smile, and Raylan is satisfied.

The guy he’d bumped into earlier is down the bar on another stool, sipping on a beer and reading a paperback with a dragon on the cover.

Raylan waits for the guy to get close to the bottom of the bottle, calls the bartender over. “Another one, for the reader. On me.”

The bartender sets the beer in front of the reading guy, who looks up. The bartender indicates Raylan, and Raylan raises his glass, gets a nod in return.

Raylan is down to chewing on ice, and debating whether to go out for food or stay here, when the guy comes over, beer in hand and book shoved into the pocket of his lightweight jacket.

“Thanks for the beer,” he says.

He has the prettiest blue eyes. “Least I could do,” Raylan says, and lets his smile crinkle up, the smile he means. Another form of charm, but honest.

The guy gives him half a smile in return. “I was about to go out and get a bite. You want to join me? If you don’t have other plans, I mean.”

“If you know somewhere good.”

“There’s a decent cafe about a mile walk.”

“Sounds good.” Raylan sets the glass down, shakes hands with the guy, firm grip, callouses. Interesting. “Ray.”

“Tim.”

Raylan follows Tim out into the warm evening. The weather here is like Miami, muggy and hot, but the air is moving tonight, and the contrast with the air conditioned hotel feels good instead of a high summer slap in the face. He settles into a comfortable amble at Tim’s elbow, and shakes off the last of his earlier frustration and anger.

Some folks might doubt it, his ex-wife being one, but Raylan has patience when he needs it. He’d let Pike’s scent get the better of him when he’d first arrived, and he should have remembered that hunting means you sometimes have to lay back.

That he can lay back while having dinner with a handsome stranger is a nice perk. Nicest thing that’s happened to him all day. He plans to make the most of it.

That Raylan ends up in bed with Tim is not a surprise, not to Raylan, and he suspects, not to Tim.

Raylan’s hotel room is adequate for their purposes: floor to receive their clothes and shoes, bed fairly firm, temperature pleasant. Tim gives like he gets, isn’t shy about what he wants, picks up on Raylan’s likes fast. Tim doesn’t mind kissing some stranger, either, which Raylan appreciates. Lot of guys don’t kiss other guys, not on a one night stand. That’s a shame, to Raylan, because he loves kissing.

They’re having a good time, and Raylan is feeling a release, an unwinding in the small of his back. It’s been too long since he’s had a good fuck with a man.

Tim has tattoos, and some scars, and the story he told Raylan over dinner fits both those things. Not that he’d said much - left home quick as he could, couple hitches in the military, now he’s doing his own thing - and obviously edited, but Raylan hadn’t said much more in return.

They hadn’t needed to, not for what they’re doing.

Now that Tim’s under his hands, and then under him, it doesn’t matter. The boy’s got strong damn fingers, and a tight ass, a way of fucking back at Raylan, a way of giving just when Raylan needs him to.

They fall into sync easy, and only fall out when Raylan can’t hold out any longer, when Tim just has to reach down for his own dick, hips stuttering a little out of time.

Raylan comes, goes wobbly on his braced arms for maybe a second, or six, in relief, and summons the energy to slide his cock up against Tim’s sweet spot, awkward, but willing. Tim hasn’t come yet.

Tim’s got hold of himself, strips his cock until come stripes his stomach. He tightens up around Raylan’s cock as he orgasms, and Raylan hisses, getting sensitive, and slips out as soon as Tim lets him.

Raylan rolls onto his back, slides the condom off and drops it on the wrapper he’d left on the bedside table for just that purpose, lays back, and they catch their breath together.

“Man, that was nice.” Raylan pats at Tim’s thigh.

“Mm. Yeah.”

A couple minutes tick by. Raylan can’t quite relax enough to sleep. Though he’s never been one to just pass out after, he does like to lay there and sort of float when he can.

Tim sits up, stretches out long and lean over his knees. Raylan admires all the lines and curves he makes. His sculpted arms are a thing of beauty, and Raylan follows them in to look over the defined but not chiseled chest of a man who doesn’t go to the gym to look good, but got that way because of what he does. A little soft around the middle, but he’s got to be late 20s, early 30s, and he’ obviously comfortable enough with himself to not have to be one of those assholes who thinks about nothing but how defined his abs are. Raylan’s had a few of those guys, but it’s like fucking a sex doll with a pre-installed porno soundtrack.

On Tim, the softness is a little endearing. Makes him a person and not just a body.

Raylan gives in to temptation and runs his hand up Tim’s back. “You want to stay? I’m good for another round if you give me 45 minutes.”

“Thanks, man. But I got some work to do early.” Tim swings his legs off the bed.

Raylan thinks perhaps Tim’s work isn’t strictly legal , but that isn’t his look out. “Okay. Here.” He grabs for the hotel notepad and cheap pen, writes down his cell number. He’s got a month of international coverage, and he might as well use it to get laid. “I’ll be here another couple of days, probably. If you want to fool around, give me a call.”

“Sure thing.” Tim puts the piece of paper in the pocket of his pants, which he’s got pulled up around his hips and not fastened. Raylan’d just had him, but damn if the pants hanging off his hips and mostly covering his dick don’t make him look alluring.

Tim grabs his boxers and shirt from the floor, uses the boxers to wipe the come off his belly, and shoves them in his back pocket. He doesn’t bother to put on the shirt, just lets it hang from a couple of fingers.

Raylan smirks. “Stay classy, man.”

Tim gives him the finger, a lazy gesture without much heat, and zips his pants up. He goes to the door, says, “goodnight,” and lets himself out.

The next day, Raylan takes his careful Spanish and a picture of Roland Pike on a tour of the seedier motels in Managua, the kind of place that would rather take cash than credit. The task keeps him going all day, except for a quick lunch at a little cafe that seems busy enough to be worth trying, and into the evening.

Sunset is starting to color the sky when one of the motel clerks says _no_ less emphatically than the others.

Raylan lets the charm out to work, a small smile, leaning in. He can’t help being tall, and obviously foreign, but he can change his body language a little. “Estas seguro? Por favor, mira la fotografía de nuevo.” _Are you sure? Please look at the picture again._

The clerk looks over Raylan’s shoulder. Any response she was about to make gets sucked back, and she shakes her head.

Maybe her boss just walked in. Raylan figures to come back later, with a little money and a different pitch. Maybe a different clerk. There’s nothing to be gained from pushing. He thanks her, and heads back out to the street, squinting in the setting sunlight.

A whisper of movement at his back and there’s a gun in his ribs.

“Walk, deputy. No one’s going to care if you scream.” Tommy Bucks. One of Gio’s right hand men. A cold killer.

And on the trail of Roland Pike himself.

Raylan lets a hard smile slide out. “Okay, Tommy. Let’s take a ride.”

He doesn’t fight as Bucks walks him into an alleyway and shoves him into the back of a van, next to a smaller man, probably local, gagged and restrained at the wrists and ankles. Bucks jerks zip ties tight around Raylan’s wrists, ‘til the plastic edges bite into flesh, but Raylan’s not worried. He’s got a knife in his boot - no backwoods Kentucky boy would be caught dead without a knife - and besides, his blood is up.

Bucks zipties Raylan’s ankles, around the ordinary boots he’s wearing, instead of the cowboy boots he left behind to seem less, well, obnoxious American. Though Raylan kicks, can't give in easy, he doesn't even slow Bucks down. Rough fingers grab his jaw, and Raylan fights, but Bucks has been through this rodeo before, and in the end, Raylan's got a mouthful of cotton, and then the van doors slam shut.

Night falls but good once they leave the city outskirts behind, the tiny windows in the van’s back doors going gray and grayer, and then reaching for black. Raylan keeps himself centered, knows he probably has one chance to take advantage of the situation when Bucks stops.

Raylan’s got a plan.

Well, a vague sense of where to start. Except he hasn’t been able to get at the knife in his boot.

After what Raylan’s time sense, honed during endlesss work meetings, tells him is just over two hours, Bucks turns off the main road, slowing, and then onto a bumpy road that’s probably dirt.

Country. Isolated.

Raylan’s beginning to get a little worried.

Bucks doesn’t start with Raylan, which throws Raylan off his game; Bucks hauls the local man out of the van first, with the muzzle of a gun pressed tight to the man’s temple. Lets him fall to the ground, then crouches. Must be doing something to the restraints on the guy’s ankles because Bucks then makes him stand up, at gunpoint, and marches him off.

Then it’s Raylan’s turn.

When Bucks yanks, Rayan lets himself fall heavily, with as much momentum as possible. Before he can execute the roll and kick he had planned, Bucks is on him, jamming the muzzle of the gun into his dick and balls. Holding the gun hard and steady in place, Bucks reaches down with a flick knife and rips through the ties around Raylan’s ankles. Bucks rises from his crouch in one motion, his eyes never leaving Raylan, the gun muzzle pointed right at Raylan’s face the whole time

Raylan had been wondering how Bucks controlled the other prisoner while down there cutting his ankles free. Now he knows. Lucky fucking him.

“Get up, Deputy.”

Raylan gets to his feet as slow as he can get away with, and Bucks prods him forward. It’s hard to walk with his dick and balls trying to crawl back up into his body, but the gun at his head is pretty persuasive.

The other guy is bound to a banana tree across the little clearing, facing forward. He looks scared.

Bucks attaches Raylan to another banana tree, to the side, more zip ties threaded through the ones on his wrists, and those attached to a chain around the tree that’s obviously been there awhile.

Raylan’s not afraid of much. Mines collapsing on him, mostly. But his gut is starting to churn. He maybe, might have, he’s beginning to believe, been just a little bit arrogant coming down to Nicaragua without back up.

“You sit tight, Deputy. I’ll get to you after I finish talking to this spic farmer. You think Rollie Pike would know some farmer? You think he would just buy an old car from some random? Hell, no.” Bucks holsters his gun, takes off his sport coat, and rolls up his sleeves. “Pay close attention, Deputy.”

Bucks walks away, just turns his back on Raylan like he’s nothing.

All the time in the world. All the time for dread to build.

The other guy, the farmer, has already sweated through his shirt.

Raylan really, really, doesn’t want to piss himself, he thinks with the resolute clarity of a man reaching for some, any, kind of control.

If he can just control his bladder, everything will be okay

Shades of living with Arlo, bargaining with the void to beat back the fear, and he’s furious, for a second, that even now, in what will probably be the last minutes of his life, that fucker is still intruding on him.

Raylan watches Bucks walk through the beams from the van headlights, concentrating to keep the fear from overtaking him. There’s a nearly full moon, too, which sheds an eerie double light. Bucks slides the knife from his belt.

“You sold a car to this guy,” Bucks says. “An old ford. Color of shit.”

The farmer agrees he sold the car. Denies knowing Pike. Denies it even when the tip of the ugly knife scores his face.

"Why'd he come to you? You were his contact, weren't you? You know where he went."

Raylan thinks this is a show, for his benefit. Becomes more certain as Bucks refuses to believe anything the farmer says, as Bucks gets more and more cruel: the knife, his knee, and somehow Raylan always has a perfect view. His stomach rolls, and Raylan tries to swallow, keep it down.

When Bucks gets tired of _no, I just sold him the car, he gave me dollars, he was the first to want it, I didn’t even ask his name, I haven’t seen him, no, no nonononono_ \- when Bucks gets tired of cracking the gun across the man’s face, and kneeing him in the balls, of knife rips and choked off screams, Bucks crosses back to the van.

With the calm and deliberation of a man thoroughly familiar with his course of action, Bucks opens a padded case, and takes out a cylinder.

Raylan knows dynamite when he sees it.

Bucks attaches a blasting cap. Threads in a fuse.

The chain around the tree rattles, Raylan straining against it. He’s trying to shout behind the gag, making animal noises, noises that turn to howls, as Bucks approaches the farmer, dynamite clasped light and casual in his hand.

The farmer prays, voice fast and broken, seeing the end.

Raylan screams into the gag as Bucks takes hold of the farmer’s jaw, pushes the stick of explosive into his mouth.

Bucks falls.

Raylan's can’t figure what happened, scream dying in his throat, waiting for Bucks to get up. The pool of blood spreading from under Bucks’ skull starts to convince Raylan he’s not going to.

Okay, there's someone out there with a weapon, but Raylan doesn't care who it is. Doesn't think on who could make a shot like that in the moonlight. Military or police or one of Gio's rivals. All Raylan can think about is getting away.

The farmer is frozen in place, eyes wide, trembling. The dynamite is still in his mouth. Dynamite can be unstable.

Raylan can't check out. He’s breathing in sobs, tries to slow himself down. He’s still gagged and if he throws up - well, he’s not going to. He’s going to get himself under control, he’s going to get out of these bonds, and he’s going to free the farmer.

A shadow moves through the trees, then another. Then a voice in English: “Coming in.”

Two men enter the clearing on silent feet, and split up.

A face looms into Raylan's vision, streaked green and brown, and hands reach up, and the gag falls away.

The second figure has crossed to the farmer, and eases the dynamite free.

The face in front of him says, "Raylan? It's okay."

Raylan tries to get his brain together, find the name.

_Tim._

It’s Tim.

“Take Bucks’ car and get out of here,” Tim says. He’s got a big-ass rifle slung over his camo-clothed back. He grabs Raylan’s wrists. There’s a hard jerk on the zip ties; they slither off, and Raylan’s hands are free. “We’ll get the other guy to a hospital.”

Across the clearing, the second man is doing the same for the farmer.

Raylan licks his lips. He needs something. He. He needs. He’s in shock, he knows that, from a distant spot deep in the meat his his brain.

“Raylan.” Tim’s voice is hard, like a slap. He slips something out of his pocket, tugs a bottle off his belt. Protein bar and water. “Eat and drink this. In the van. Now."

He lets himself be turned around, Tim’s hand pressing at his shoulder. Then he shakes himself, and shrugs Tim’s hand away. “Got it.”

“You know how to get out of here? There should be a GPS. Bucks ain’t local.”

“I’ll be okay.” Raylan shoves the protein bar in his pocket, and takes a step, concentrating on being steady.

“Okay.” Tim hesitates. Tim’s partner, shorter and stockier and dark haired, has an arm around the farmer’s shoulder; he makes an impatient signal at them. Tim puts a hand on Raylan’s shoulder, a fleeting touch, so gentle it feels alien, says, “Look, just leave the van at the hotel. We’ll - I’ll - take care of it. Then get the first flight stateside, you hear me?”

Raylan nods.

“Go on.” An order.

Raylan does as he’s told, functioning at a basic level, brain holding back the the horror, for now. He fumbles the water bottle open, rips the protein bar wrapper with his teeth, and chokes it down. Water courses down his chin and chest. He needs out of here, and he needs to chase off the shakes.

Once he's in the van, he hardly thinks about what he's doing. He follows the GPS mechanically, stopping just once on the side of a country road to piss.

When Raylan walks into the hotel just after dawn, he looks like a guy coming off a bender, and the hotel staff treat him accordingly. Some visiting American, out sampling the local nightlife, because that’s what business trips are for.

He gets on the hotel Wifi and finds a flight. He can get a plane into New Orleans in three hours, to Miami in five. He books New Orleans, and a connecting flight to Miami from there. It’s the long way around. He suspects he needs the time, and Tim was probably right about getting out of Nicaragua.

He’ll text Dan when.

When he gets back.

Raylan showers, fast and efficient. His right wrist stings where the plastic cut in. Blood disappears down the drain. He can’t get clean enough right now, could stay in here for ten years, but he can’t let that get started, has to be ruthless with himself.

He dresses, throws his clothes from last night in the trash, all except the boots; he didn’t bring another pair of shoes and he has no time to get new. The front desk calls him a cab.

Raylan leaves Managua, stomach clenching, head starting to pulse, painfully. He sticks to Coke on the flight, cold, with extra ice. Buys three magazines for his layover in New Orleans ( _Discover, Maxim, Rolling Stone_ ), and gets as far away from the airport bars as possible, because once he starts, he isn’t going to be able to stop.

He crawls into his own bed around midnight.

Tommy Bucks does not return from Nicaragua.

Roland Pike is in the wind.

Raylan shakes, in the night, and falls asleep thinking about the prettiest blue eyes, and a face in the darkness.

 ****  
****

Three weeks later, Raylan shuffles through his mail to find a postcard showing the hotel in Managua.

The chicken scratch on the back reads: _You’re welcome_.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: There *will* be a sequel to this, and sooner than I expected....


End file.
